Of Bobby Fischer, who has just passed away in Iceland at the age of 64, this much may truly be said:  He was a unique figure.

Few others could have been said to have gone from “hero” to “zero” in quite as spectacular a fashion as the controversial chess grandmaster and former World Champion (still the only American to have held the title).  A former child prodigy in the game, his stunning upset win over Boris Spassky in 1972 and a still-unmatched streak of 20 consecutive wins in tournament play would seem to have cemented him as someone who belonged on the Mount Rushmore of professional chess, alongside the likes of Lasker, Capablanca, and Alekhine.  That, plus the fact he defeated the pride of the then-Soviet Union at one of their own games (as chess was dominated by the Soviets at that time) made him a bona fide American hero during that Cold War-flavored era, and his win ignited a chess furor in this country during the mid-’70s.

But even then, there were problems.  After his defeat of Spassky, Fischer began to withdraw from active chess competition, becoming something of a recluse.  His own tempestuous nature (he was noted even then for being a volatile personality, to the point where he would walk out of scheduled matches if his demands weren’t met) was also winning him few friends outside of the United States, which was as a whole still enamored of him for dethroning Spassky and ending a three decade-long streak of Russian dominance.  Ultimately, after flat-out refusing to defend his title against Anatoly Karpov, the governing body of the game stripped him of the championship and awarded it to Karpov on a forfeit.

After that, Fischer was rarely seen in public, and became almost a legendary figure both in and out of the chess world.  Indeed, some students of the game continued to contend, for decades afterward, that since Fischer had technically never been defeated for the World Championship, he was still the “real” titleholder, with Karpov (and Garry Kasparov after him) being merely a “paper champion.”  Although attempts were made on several occasions to lure Fisher out of his self-imposed exile to at least provide a sense of closure to the championship controversy, but they were met with silence every time; other than a single, highly publicized exhibition rematch against Spassky in 1992 in what was then Yugoslavia, Fisher, as far as is known, never so much as touched a chessboard again after his forfeit.

That rematch landed the onetime American hero in hot water with the US government, due to the fact Fisher, an American citizen at the time, was conducting business in a country America had official sanctions against.  A standing order was made for Fisher to be arrested the moment he returned to America; Fisher’s response, simply enough, was to never return in the first place.  For the rest of his life he lived abroad, seeking political refuge in countries such as Hungary and Japan.  After a 2004 arrest in Japan for using an invalid passport, Fischer next fled to Iceland, which granted him official citizenship.

Out of respect for the recently deceased, I will not discuss Fischer’s rather extreme political views here, other than to mention the fact they did exist — and were every bit as extreme as advertised.  Do a Google search on his name to see what that was all about.  (Not recommended for the squeamish.)

It’s a debatable point as to which Fischer should be remembered on the day of his passing — the former American hero, who helped change the image of chess from one of stuffy intellectualism into something of an “Everyman” game, or the American expatriate with a penchant for alienating just about everyone with his verbal diatribes and flagrant abuse of international law.  As for myself, I will try to think of the former, but it is very hard to dislodge the image of the latter from my mind.